Friday Update

It's not been an easy week.Most of the time I feel ok and then I'm hit by an empty feeling and can hardly raise the enthusiasm to respond to an email or get things done around the flat.

My Grans funeral was yesterday.My Dad delivered a moving eulogy and although it was a sad occasion,it was nice to be able to remember my Gran in better times before the dementia took hold.Like my tears at the football last weekend,I found myself crying when I least expected it.My Dad mentioning my Grans neat hand writing compared to his intelligible scrawls ( and mine) reminded me of the countless beautiful thankyou letters my Gran used to send.Not one-liners, but letters which had obviously been written with a great deal of care and thought.

I made it through the hard House techno version ( ok,it was the original!) of the Lord is my Shepherd, but found the more upbeat "One more step along the world I go" with it's "Give me courage when the world is rough,
keep me loving though the world is tough" lines brought tears to my eyes again.I would never claim to have had a tough upbringing, but our family has had it's moments and my Gran was always there for me.I think I'll leave it at that.

On the poker front I won the last Brit Blogger on Wednesday night ( small turnout) after a few hands held up.I stayed up to watch Andy Murray make it through to the US Open semi and bombed out of a few Party $22's before taking one down.

Last night I was glad to have Nacho for company and didn't really feel like playing poker.I played two $22's,bubbling one when my 55 lost to AK and winning the other one to leave me $20 down for the week so far at Party.

On another note, apologies to anyone I contacted re a Bodog blogger tourney for Brits/Euro players.I never heard back from them after their initial enthusiasm and I assume it has something to do with googles purge on poker blogs with ads and also the recent press stuff on Bodogs struggles in the market.

I mention Bodog because I still have the software loaded and had £10 in my account ready for any blogger games.I've never played $10nl and hit up a Bodog cash table to mess about for a while before bed last night.The standard of play was woeful and I left after 1/2hr having tripled my buy-in.If $10nl is that juicy I don't think I ever need to worry about going broke!

Even through a crap week,Dr Pauly still managed to raise a smile with his quote about how playing poker is like using a cheese grater on your nuts at times.In turbos it seems the grating action is constant.The upside being that there's still plenty of money to be made.It brought to mind another quote about how every poker player loses.Not all the time obviously, but even winning players cannot escape the fact that they will lose and lose often.

Too many times recently I think I've sat down expecting to win and I've not been realistic enough about the swings and short-term variance.If I can cash in 1/4 of the turbos I play in ( my ITM % was 28% last time I checked for 18 player games) that still leaves me crashing out of 3/4 of the games I play to either bad beats,lost races or after running into monsters.

Ok,I've finally booked up two night break in the Dam,leaving on Sept 23rd.I may as well use some of my winnings to enjoy myself and to remind me why having my balls grated on a regular basis is actually worth it.

I'm still a wee bit unsure about going myself, but I've enjoyed reading about Dr Paulys solo trips and his reports are defintely my inspiration.I have a few books I'd like to take and may even consider taking my lappy.Hmmmm!

Just time for the Catchphrase version of the celtc goalkeepers big blunder last weekend in the Old Firm game.Say what you see....